“Why do you know so many memes?” Your newest thrall is around eighteen, your youngest ever. You feel kind of dirty about it, but he kept throwing himself at wannabes and he was going to get hurt.
“I know many things,” you say enigmatically, thinking back to ASCII art that puts these ‘birb’ memes to shame. You knew the height of the digital age, thanks. And it’s already dead. Kids these days.
“Woah. Did you read my mind?” Like you need to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. He wants you to call him “Chaos” and you’re thinking soon it’s gonna be time to sit the poor thing down and talk about safe sane and consensual ways of dealing with his frankly alarming disregard for his own safety.
“I did not.” You swirl your wine glass. It is full of wine but Rosie already fed you today so it’s just for show. He watches you adjust your dark red $150 RenFaire cloak bought for you by your favorite thrall, a fifty year old widow with two kids who has been singing bawdy songs for thirty years at the faire and brought them to you when you two hooked up. She has breasts you’d kill for, and a personality worth making immortal.
But you haven’t talked about that with Rosie yet.
“Where did you learn about memes?” Chaos rolls onto his back on your black down couch, sinking into the soft cushions but being careful to keep his feet off the armrest as he sprawls out.
“From your Mom,” you say, skirting the issue. You’re on a facebook group with a bunch of other ‘out of touch parents’ who share memes of minions saying rude things about children. It takes up a good portion of your time actually.
Chaos laughs. He crosses his legs and you point imperiously at his snack of dunkaroos and gatorade. He inhales food like a vacuum. Kids these days don’t know how good they got it. Back in your day you were starving on the street smoking cigarettes at ten years old before your parents up and left you in Yosemite National Park. You’ve always wondered if they just simply forgot you there on the road trip. Back then the cars were so unreliable maybe they exploded before they could turn around and get you.
Kids these days have it so easy. You googled your family a while ago, but there was nothing about any ‘Sinclair’ family matching their description, and with the way your family was, paper records could be anywhere.
“So uh,” Chaos shuffles his feet and picks up his phone, fiddling with it for a moment. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Never ask a lady her age,” you hiss for good measure and flash some fang at him, but he’s been around for a few months now and he hisses back almost playfully at you.
Kids these days.
“So.” Chaos says again, louder. “Um I did something for you. And I don’t want you to be mad.”
You’ve never threatened the kid with bodily harm- hell, you only feed from his wrist because teenagers would take it all out of proportion and you’re not a creep- but you consider threatening him now. Whatever he’s about to say is saturating his scent with anxiety.
You cross one jean leg over the other and sink into the high-end recliner you now swear by. You’re glad you wore high waisted jeans and your black tank top under the cloak. You feel like a disapproving Mom more than a Vampire master.
“I kind of submitted you to 23andMe,” Chaos explains slowly. “Remember when I said you snore and drool in your sleep? It took a long time but like… I got enough and I sent it in.”
This kid! Has a death wish!
You leap to your feet and your cape billows aggressively, but the effect is now ruined by your high waisted jeans and birkenstocks. You snarl at him.
“HOW DARE YOU!” Your voice booms in your cathedral ceilings, and your three cats all startle and scatter: Boo heading into the laundry room to bury herself in Chaos’s baggy black sweaters, Ambrose running for the bedroom to get cat hair all over your fresh silk sheets, and Boston Creme Pie bolting out the cat door and into the yard.
Chaos grimaces and there are tears abruptly in his eyes.
“You said you don’t have family! I thought maybe you’d want to find your descendants or something!”
“I’M FIFTY THREE YEARS OLD!” You can’t believe this bullshit. “I have no descendants!”
There’s a silence in the house, and Elliot’s music upstairs has turned off, so he’s probably noticed there’s a fight.
Chaos is crying and trying to be a man about it.
A door upstairs creaks open. The quiet footfalls of socked feet on your nice hardwood stairs.
Elliot sticks his head around the corner of the stairwell.
“I thought you were born in the eighteen hundreds?”
You haven’t had to breathe in decades but you sigh almost daily. You sigh now.
“Does it matter?”
“Oh my God.” Elliot leans against the wall dramatically and you scowl at him. “That’s why your taste is so modern!”
You gather your velvet cloak around you, but both boys are thinking fast.
“She likes watching ice skating!” Chaos gapes at Elliot, who stares back at him with only the slightest more decorum of a twenty-something.
“She likes leopard print,” Elliot confirms, as though delivering grim news.
“Gentlemen,” you interject, putting as much authority into your voice as you can. “It’s late. Maybe we talk about this tomorrow night?”
“Do you have a social security number?” Chaos demands.
“The real question is: is it the same one you had when you were alive?”
“Or is she an alien?!”
“Oh my God an Alien Vampire!”
You sigh heavily again for posterity and sit down in your recliner, grabbing the remote and turning on Handmaid’s Tale. You turn the volume all the way up to drown the kids out and you’ve never felt like more of a Boomer in your whole un-life.